INSIGHT - Toyota turret trucks a cool choice for air-con maker

In a display of how Toyota Material Handling Australia (TMHA) can partner with our customers to assist in achieving efficiencies, we recently consulted with National air-conditioning manufacturer, ActronAir, to help plan their material handling requirements and provide equipment for their new expanded warehouse and distribution facility in Marsden Park, Sydney.

As we swelter through the hottest 2019 in history – with mean temperatures exceeding 30 degrees Celsius and extremes just short of 50c – it’s timely that TMHA, by way of association, is helping keep Australia cool by supplying a pair of Toyota BT Vector VCE150A turret trucks, which are at the heart of ActronAir’s new 21-strong all-electric fleet of Toyota Material Handling equipment.

The need for a new headquarters and accompanying equipment rose from ActronAir experiencing double-digit growth in manufacturing over six years.

Although ActronAir’s new warehouse is 2.5 times the size of its old one – at 25,000 square-metres – the company still needed to use the space in its new facility as efficiently and productively as possible.

It knew that to do so, it needed very narrow aisles and to rack as highly as possible, but its business is quite unique in that a lot of its air-conditioning equipment is custom-made and requires non-standard pallet sizes and storage racks.

That’s when TMHA stepped in to advise on the specialised equipment required to meet its goals.

With tight and accurate turning between aisles, the Toyota BT Vector VCE150A turret trucks bring full very narrow aisle (VNA) functionality in an extremely compact footprint, and have a choice of chassis and cab widths.

Unusually, the Toyota BT turret trucks and other Toyota Material Handling equipment was specified and optioned before any ground was broken to build the new warehouse. Unlike other instances where storage systems are designed and built before material handling equipment is put in place, this situation worked the other way around. Because the detailed design for the warehouse was set around the capabilities of the equipment, the Toyota turret trucks in effect helped optimise the warehouse design.

The collaborative process with ActronAir is an excellent example of a key pillar of the Toyota Advantage, Tailored Business Solutions, being put into practice. We pride ourselves on the flexibility we can provide our customers and in the case of ActronAir many things were highly specific to its business. The individual approach we take to providing tailored business solutions equates to substantial reductions in operating costs through greater efficiencies. It’s something we’re proud to do for our customers.

Putting the Tailored Business Solutions Toyota Advantage into effect in this instance required a considerable amount of data capture, analysis and technical programming.

We had multiple technicians on site on many occasions, and our programmers working behind the scenes to ensure the dimensions were down to the millimetre.

We also made arrangements for ActronAir to experience our turret trucks operating first-hand at another Toyota BT turret truck customer’s site. Oz Design Furniture granted ActronAir a visit to its nearby Rouse Hill warehouse. Their operation was quite similar to what ActronAir envisaged for its VNA distribution centre and it also uses non-standard pallets. They thought it was pretty cool to experience that first-hand and see how it could practically benefit their business.

In a final display of putting Tailored Business Solutions to work, we departed with convention to assist ActronAir in meeting their warehouse’s go-live date by assembling the turret trucks at their site, rather than our Moorebank headquarters, to get them operational as quickly as possible. All operations at the warehouse have been implemented and are now working smoothly, and at full working capacity.